San Diego has slowly and begrudgingly started to provide facilities for the homeless. It started with the rest room facilities and washing stations that were put up as a result of a Hepatitius A crisis. It made sense to provide minimal facilities such as are provided at any outdoor event in San Diego. Prior to that people were urinating and defecating on the street because they had nowhere else to go. Then amid much resistance they finally got the idea of providing storage facilities for the meager belongings of homeless people so they would not have to push them around in shopping carts.

Theft of homeless peoples' belongings is a big threat when you're living on the street. And it makes it difficult to use public institutions, the library or go for a job interview if you show up with a shopping cart full of your possessions. The City routinely scooped up peoples' possessions and put them in garbage trucks. In one case they scooped up a tent and placed it in a garbage truck with a man inside. Getting people and their belongings off the street is one of the concomitant results of providing storage lockers. The grocery stores and super markets are also thankful not to have their shopping carts stolen.

Laura Davis woke up on a sidewalk in downtown San Diego on Monday morning, pulled back the blanket she used as a makeshift tent and looked to her side.

The two bags that held the bulk of her possessions were missing.

“I woke up, and they were gone,” she said.

The apparent theft was frustrating, a setback — and not uncommon for homeless people on the street. Davis said a friend of hers recently lost her children’s birth certificates and other important documents to thieves in the night.

“You need storage facilities so people can get out of being homeless,” she said. “It almost feels like society wants to keep people homeless.”

Help may be coming within a few months. Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced in his State of the City address last week that the city plans to open a second storage facility for homeless people this spring, an addition that would more than double what is available now.

Details were sparse in the speech, but Faulconer spokesman Greg Block said Friday that the new facility will be in a 25,000-square-foot, two-story building at 20th and Commercial streets with space for 700 to 1,000 storage bins.

The second floor will have public restrooms, and the facility will be run by the San Diego Housing Commission, which will hire an operator to manage it, Block said.

Besides helping keep sidewalks clear and protecting property from being stolen, the new facility will allow homeless people like Davis to look for work and go to other appointments.

But as always, when the City tries to do the right thing, indignant citizens are fighting back. Sherman Heights residents don't want a storage facility for the homeless at 20th and Commercial streets. They don't care if the City puts it somewhere else, mind you, just not right in their back yard. The city, however, is promising to be a good neighbor, stressing the site will have security 24/7. There will be no loitering, drugs or alcohol allowed, and they will have regular waste pick-ups within a block radius.

So can't we all get along? Let the homeless have a modicum of respectability? The situation as it exists right now is much worse in terms of the visibility of the homeless on the streets than it would be if they were allowed to store their belongings and have bathroom privileges. And the City would not have to remove 30,000 pounds of garbage every week.

March 17, 2018

It’s the biggest Trump con since he told Americans the tax cut would help them more than the rich. He’s calling for a $1.5 trillion boost in infrastructure spending—but he’s proposing just $200 billion in federal funding.

So where does the rest come from? Tax hikes on the middle-class and poor, and from private investors.

1. State and local governments, already starved for cash, would have to raise taxes.

2. Private investors, for their part, won’t pitch in unless they’re guaranteed a good return on their investment, most likely in the form of tolls and other user fees. Or worse, governments might be forced to transfer ownership of roads and bridges to private corporations.

So the public will end up paying twice: in higher taxes and higher tolls, and won’t even get what’s needed.

3. Projects that will be most attractive to big investors are where tolls and fees will bring in the biggest bucks: Brand new highways and bridges rather than the thousands of smaller bridges, airports, pipes, and water treatment facilities most in need of repair.

4. Trump’s infrastructure plan only worsens the racial justice divide in America, by leaving disadvantaged communities behind while giving massive profits to the rich and corporations through new tolls and fees.

5. It’s a double con because now that Trump and the Republicans have enacted a huge tax cut for corporations and the rich, there’s no money left for infrastructure. The White House says the $200 billion of federal spending will be offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget, but doesn’t explain how or where. Given what we know of Trump’s and the GOP’s priorities, that means taking money from programs that protect vulnerable Americans, not from the billions in wasted on military spending.

A real infrastructure program—as opposed to Trump’s fake program—would focus on repairing existing infrastructure, doing so based on need rather than financial returns, prioritizing public transportation over private, and clean water and renewable energy over projects that generate more pollution.

And it would be paid for by closing tax loopholes used by big corporations and the rich, not by imposing higher taxes, Trump tolls and user fees on the rest of us.

To really make America great again we need more and better infrastructure that’s for the public—not for big developers and investors.

We often think there is something missing; either in ourselves, the world or the future. It is a perception that can cause stress and depression if we think there is no way to fill the void. The truth is, there is nothing missing, but what we seek needs to be revealed. It is in suspended animation in the realm of potential. We begin to see it as we allow ourselves to participate in it on a more active level. Rather than imagining it to be so, we take it as our personal project to make it so.

What seems to be missing will be one of these qualities of Being: love, peace, joy, supply, creativity, vitality, intelligence. We do know what each of these means and what it feels like to be involved with any one of them. They are the building blocks of Life. If we feel left out of the experience of one or more, we need to look within ourselves to see if we have been withholding the reality of them. We can always upgrade our use of these basic states of being.

It is important that we keep this local in the beginning. If we start trying to figure out how our personal perception is going to help the world change, we will feel defeated. Just keep spreading the Good you thought was missing. In this way you are making a huge contribution to the betterment of humanity. Like seeds carried by the wind, our activated ideas connect with those of like-minds. They form a matrix, a new meme. Just do your part and life will reveal what has been here all along.

This undated photo provided by a family member shows Courtlin Arrington, a Huffman High School student that was fatally shot last week in Birmingham, Ala. The aunt of the 17-year-old killed by a fellow student at the Alabama school last week has called for school safety reform and action against gun violence. (Photo: Shenise Abercrombie/AP)

It was a moment of sheer terror that surely none of the hundreds of kids flooding the corridors for the end of the school day will ever forget. One moment, 17-year-old Courtlin Arrington — already accepted to college for the fall, with dreams of becoming a nurse — was seen with another teen student, a wide receiver on the football team. Then came a loud pop as a bullet went right through Courtlin’s heart, ending her life way too short of adulthood.

“The last thing I told them was ‘I love you’ and have a blessed day at school,” Courtlin’s mom, Tynesha Tatum, who has another son and daughter in the same high school, told the Birmingham News. “That was at 7:45 a.m…At 3:45 p.m., I got a call that my baby got shot.”

On Wednesday, Courtlin’s schoolmates — her murder still ringing in their ears — are planning to walk out of school and protest the lack of safety for teenagers trying to grow up in the most gun-crazed nation on the planet. If you follow the news, it’s almost certain that you’ve already heard about the National School Walkout Day, which has become — rightfully so — a huge story from coast to coast. But it’s almost a lock that you haven’t heard at all about the loss of Courtlin Arrington.

As Dr. Ernest Holmes taught; since the error is in mind, we give the mind a treatment of spiritual truth. That is the first thing we do. What follows will be individualized as the perfect result. And so I declare:

Behind the world of doing, there is the realm of Being. It is a quantum field, quivering with possibility. The perfect pattern for all life is alive in that field and is our individual and collective potential. Nothing diminishes it; there is no conflict within it. It is the Power that makes all things new as it responds to our interaction with it.

Today is not a time, but an opportunity for us to bring forth an expanded use of our own natural potential. We affirm “I am brand new right now. I begin from the highest awareness of my unwavering Source. There is nothing it cannot do through me. I am available and awakened to a greater level of living than ever before. In this moment I am grateful for everything that has ever been my experience. I know it has been nothing but my own perception of my potential that acted as cause.“

There is now an immediate release of any and all past beliefs that limited my life in any way. I am over it! I am through to the other side of it. I am as wholly perfect as was intended by the Source. I live in a world of peace and plenty for all. It is a world transformed by the renewing of our shared mind. I do my part right here, right now. I keep my mind updated and constantly alert to the beautiful possibilities for humanity.

They don't want no stinkin' second amendment. They want safety and security in their schools. The only kids that want guns today are the nuts. Most kids growing up in the suburbs don't grow up in a gun culture. Neither they nor their parents are out there shooting deer or pheasants. They don't go to Africa on safari and shoot big game. They're just not interested. But they are interested in being in a safe and secure environment especially in school, a place they come to learn. For most they don't have a choice. The law requires them to be in school. They can't opt out of what has become a dangerous environment.

Yesterday thousands of kids walked out of their classrooms to protest gun violence. The NY Times reported:

On Wednesday, driven by the conviction that they should never have to run from guns again, they walked.

So did their peers. In New York City, in Chicago, in Atlanta and Santa Monica; at Columbine High School and in Newtown, Conn.; and in many more cities and towns, students left school by the hundreds and the thousands at 10 a.m., sometimes in defiance of school authorities, who seemed divided and even flummoxed about how to handle their emptying classrooms.

The first major coordinated action of the student-led movement for gun control marshaled the same elements that had defined it ever since the Parkland shooting: eloquent young voices, equipped with symbolism and social media savvy, riding a resolve as yet untouched by cynicism.

“We have grown up watching more tragedies occur and continuously asking: Why?” said Kaylee Tyner, a 16-year-old junior at Columbine High School outside Denver, where 13 people were killed in 1999, inaugurating, in the public consciousness, the era of school shootings. “Why does this keep happening?”

It keeps happening because the gun manufacturers and dealers want their profits, and they don't care who has to pay for them. They have plausible deniability. They take no responsibility for the crap they create and sell. The NRA takes no responsibility. Their response is that we should all live in an armed camp so that way we can shoot the gunman first before he shoots us. Kids today don't want to live that way. I hope this movement gets rid of guns and weapons of relatively minor destruction. We have that to live with as well as the weapons of mass destruction. The small destructive weapons are killing more these day than the other kind.

March 14, 2018

Baby Boomers – my generation, born between 1946 and 1964 – dominated politics and the economy for years. There were just more Boomers than people of any other generation. But that’s no longer the case. Now, the biggest generation is the Millennials, born between 1983 and 2000.

Millennials are different from boomers in 6 important ways that will shape the future.

1. Millennials are more diverse than boomers – so as Millennials gain clout, expect America to become more open.More than 44 percent of Millennials identify as a race other than white. And they’re more accepting of immigrants: 69 percent of millennials think that newcomers strengthen American society, compared to 44 percent of Boomers.

2. Millennials are more distrustful of the political system than Boomers – so as Millennials gain power, expect more anti-establishment politics. A strong majority of Millennials think the country is on the wrong track. Most disapprove of both the Republican Party and the Democratic party. Virtually no Millennials – only 6 percent – strongly approve of Donald Trump, compared to 63 percent who disapprove. A strong majority – 71 percent – want a third major party to compete with Democrats and Republicans.

3. Most Millennials have a tougher financial road than Boomers – so expect them to demand changes in how we finance higher education. According to Pew Research, Millennials are the first generation in the modern era, “to have higher levels of student loan debt, poverty, and unemployment, and lower levels of wealth and personal income than any other generation at the same stage of life.” No surprise, then, that Millennials are living at home much longer than previous generations, and getting married later.

4. Millennials view the social safety net differently than boomers – so expect them to demand that Medicare and Social Security are strengthened. Boomers move into older age, more and more of the federal budget is going into Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Many Millennials even doubt Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will be there for them when they retire.

5. Millennials care more about the environment – so expect them to demand stronger environmental protection. Over 90 percent of them believe climate change is occurring, compared with 74 percent of Boomers. Over 60 percent of Millennials want to reduce the use of coal as an energy source, compared with 28 percent of Boomers. And over half of Millennials support a carbon tax, compared with 23 percent of Boomers.

6. Finally, as wealthy Boomers transfer $30 trillion to their lucky Millennial heirs, expect Millennials to demand a fairer inter-generational tax system. America is now on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth in history. As very wealthy boomers expire, an estimated $30 trillion will go to their children and grandchildren over the next three decades. The tax code allows these lucky Millennials to inherit rich Boomer assets without paying capital gains on them, and paying far lower estate taxes than previous generations. Expect this to change.

As I said, I’m a Boomer – born the same year as Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dolly Parton, among others. It’s up to you – the Millennials – to fix a system we Boomers broke.

There are dozens of squawking geese on the lake where I am this morning. They sound like a bunch of dogs yapping or if I want to imagine it another way, they are barking seals. I used to live near a river where the geese would congregate every Spring, coming home from the South. I was just far enough away that I heard them as people at a cocktail party, celebrating something.

Things are often not what they seem to be. The imagination is amazingly adept at turning perception into reality. We hear a sound in the night; our heart beats faster, we think it is a burglar; we look around for something to protect ourselves; maybe we hide under the covers. On closer inspection we find a family of raccoons on the porch scraping around, looking for food. We laugh at our previous fears, wondering why we jumped to conclusions.

I wish humans would do that with religion; look closer at their assumptions and question their perception. Do I really believe in actual places called heaven and hell? Is there a Being who looks like a man somewhere up there in the sky deciding who does what? Does the universe run on crime and punishment or is it more of a constant creating intelligence? Is Love something more than personal emotion? Is there a power for Good in this universe? Have I noticed a feeling of response to me from an invisible power? Is it even possible that my life is pre-destined? Or do I have everything to say about how it unfolds from here? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that science would eventually discover how it all works? Why would I fear that? Spiritually mature people are not afraid to ask the big questions.

Gun manufacturers and weapons manufacturers have made the world an armed camp. They're in it for the money. The US is tearing its own society apart with its foolish adherence to the Second Amendment and making that the excuse for ever more guns. Weapons manufacturers are exporting to Saudi Arabia and others which make the tragedy in Yemen possible. This foolishness puts no premium on peace and security either within or without the country. It puts a premium on GDP which has become more and more dependent on selling guns and weapons.

As is usual, the casualties for the most part are not the military or the police themselves, but innocent bystanders and civilians. Civilians make up most of the casualties of war plus their homes and businesses. Very little attempt is made to resolve matters peacefully. That would be resolving them on the cheap, and, therefore, profits would diminish.

Manufacturing has always relied on public funding in one form or another, and in particular on outlays for weaponry, even nearly three decades after the end of the Cold War. Roughly 10 percent of the $2.2 trillion in factory output in the United States goes into the production of weapons sold mainly to the Defense Department for use by the armed forces.

In this dystopian world, taxpayers and civilians pay for the military and weaponized gun manufacturers who then provide the means for civilians and taxpayers to be killed both here and abroad.

You know we're in a national security state when cutting weapons production would devastate the economy. Better not to devastate the economy, the thinking goes, and continue the killing.

Defense giant Lockheed Martin had a totally sweet quarter, raking in $700 million and looking forward to the same this time next year. So it raises eyebrows when Lockheed's anointed mouthpieces predict mass economic disaster if Congress touches the defense budget.

On Tuesday, the aerospace industry put out a report saying that chopping the defense budget would put over a million Americans out of work. Cuts that could total up to a trillion dollars over 10 years would "devastate the economy and the defense industrial base and undermine the national security of our country," said Marion Blakeley, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, which sponsored the report.

The economy and peoples' paychecks are totally dependent on militarism and an economy captured by the military . There is no other possibility for poor high school graduates except to join the military or take on massive student loan debt. Too bad students are not encouraged to pursue more peaceful pursuits. Maybe today's kids will carry forward their anti-gun activism, some day to include anti-guns abroad as well.

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Fred Guttenberg was at the midpoint of a 15-hour day of advocacy in Washington, and he was refusing to sit down. “No one should feel comfortable talking about the death of my kid,” he told a long line of Senate Democrats.

Three weeks before, his daughter Jaime had been shot to death in her high school hallway. The 14-year-old had been running away from the shooter, her father said, when a bullet severed her spinal cord.

Afterwards, Guttenberg had looked his Republican senator in the eye and told him that his response to the Parkland shooting, and the response of the president of the United States, had been “pathetically weak”. His daughter and her classmates had been hunted in their own school, and politicians needed to admit that guns were the problem and ban military-style assault weapons.

Now, the 52-year-old father was standing in a basement room in the Capitol, where Democrats were hosting an informal hearing for survivors of gun violence. Congressional Republicans had refused to hold a formal hearing.

To Guttenberg’s left were a mother whose daughter had been shot and survived the Virginia Tech massacre more than a decade before, and a mother whose six-year-old son was murdered at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012. At the time, Barack Obama had embraced Francine Wheeler, promising that this time, after the deaths of 20 small children, the reaction would be different. “It wasn’t different,” Wheeler said.

Trump is unorthodox. Other Presidents would have not immediately accepted a meeting with the North Korean dictator. The conventional wisdom is that this would be elevating Kim Jong Un's status on the world stage. So what? The issue isn't about Un's status . The issue is about peace on the Korean peninsula.

Trump is unconventional. This lets him just do the right thing sometimes without a lot of lawyerly ifs, ases and wherefores preliminarily. If Trump can strike a deal for peace, let his advisors fret and fume. They want the status quo and the status quo is war. Unfortunately for them, Trump as President has a lot of power. They can't rein him in if he doesn't want to be reined in. Just maybe he will actually meet with Un and just maybe they will work out a peace deal. Just maybe Trump will do the right thing.

Just think. Dennis Rodman could be appointed ambassador to North Korea. He seems to be the only American that gets along with Un. Trump is right. The conventional approach has not worked for over half a century. If Trump wants to make peace, let him do it. Whether or not Un's status is elevated is irrelevant. The lawyerly approach is irrelevant.

It's unconscionable that North and South Korea sit there in a state of war because the US invaded. And to what end? What did the US accomplish there? It prevented Chinese communism from taking over the peninsula? You think? We invaded Vietnam for the same reason. That was a debacle. China is now our biggest trading partner. China's influence in the world is on the rise with its Belt and Road initiative. Now we are trading partners with them, by the way, a communist country. The US has fucked up so many times it's unbelievable. I won't even mention the invasion of Iraq. Yes, let's get more women in there as Congress persons. Maybe they will have an unconventional approach as well.

As a final note, the kids are telling the NRA to go fuck themselves. Good for them. We don't have to stand for a country where Wayne LaPierre is the dictator. Let's go the unconventional route for once and create a sane society.